Joseph A. Burns
Joseph A. Burns (March 22, 1941 – February 26, 2025) was a Cornell University professor with dual roles in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Astronomy department. His main work was about how objects move in the Solar System, especially in planetary science.
He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1966. He served as Vice Provost of Research and Engineering from 2003 to 2008.
Burns edited the planetary science journal Icarus from 1980 to 1997 and helped edit two books, Planetary Satellites (1977) and Satellites (1986). He held leadership roles in scientific societies: Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, and he chaired its divisions for Planetary Sciences and for Dynamical Astronomy. He was also President of the IAU commission on celestial mechanics and dynamical astronomy.
He was a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received the American Astronomical Society’s Masursky Award in 1994 and the Division on Dynamical Astronomy’s Brouwer Award in 2013.
Burns is best known for his theoretical work on how bodies move in the Solar System. In 1979 he explained how radiation forces affect tiny space particles. In 1998 he and colleagues discovered two Uranian moons, Caliban and Sycorax. He worked with the Galileo and Cassini imaging teams. His students included Mark Showalter and Brett J. Gladman. The asteroid 2708 Burns was named in his honor, with the naming published in 1982.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:48 (CET).